Even as Establishment Washington, Republican as well as Democrat, does it’s ostrich imitation and pretends that there is Nothing To See Here, Move Along, two organizations, and two courageous judges, are beginning to peel back layer after layer from the fetid onion of corruption that is the scandal of the IRS’s “lost” emails. As the Washington Free Beacon reports, law suits brought by True the Vote and the invaluable watchdog group Judicial Watch have resulted in court orders that the IRS answer the complaints and show eft-sone and right speedily (i.e., within a month) what steps were taken to retrieve the supposedly lost emails from Lois “I’ll take the Fifth” Lerner. As Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, noted, “These extraordinary court rulings are key steps in unraveling the Obama IRS’s ongoing cover up of its abuses against critics of this administration.”

Commenting on this development, Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit had the obvious ( also the correct) response: “They were incriminating, and show White House involvement. So they were ‘lost.’”

It was ever thus. I am just re-reading bits of David Fromkin’s classic Europe’s Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914? In a chapter called “Shredding the Evidence,” Fromkin details how the French and Germans both did their best to muddy the historical record, and thereby escape blame for the catastrophe of the war, by concealing, destroying, or falsifying incriminating documents. Gradually, modern scholarship has managed to piece together the truth, at least in broad outline. It has been a painstaking process. Looking back over the many efforts by the chief players to distort the truth and thereby escape blame, Fromkin notes soberly that “On the whole, we have to draw the obvious and commonsense conclusion that documents destroyed or hidden probably were embarrassing or incriminating, and that the effort to blot out or falsify the record was undertaken in order to deny responsibility for the IRS’s criminal activity in persecuting opponents of the Obama administration.”

Actually, Fromkin writes “war” where I have substituted a contemporary reality. But the same “obvious and commonsense conclusion” applies.

President Obama, to his shame, said that there wasn’t “even a smidgeon of corrpution” at the IRS. Quite right. There is a boatload, and it stinks to heaven. Pace theDavid Brookses and Bob Godlattes of the world, talk of impeachment — beginning, perhaps, but only beginning, with John Koskinen, the smarmy Democratic apparatchik who is head of the IRS — occupies a place not in “cloud-cuckoo land” but here in the terra firma of responsible political discourse. Anyone who cares about the future of the country — which is not the same thing as the results of the next election — should remember and act on this truth early and often.

To demonstrate that I play fair and try to hold myself to a standard of English composition at least as high as that I expect of thinkers and writers as esteemed as you, allow me to point out an embarrassing mistake in my own note: where I write "I doubt that I am the only, let alone the first, reader to notice the error . . . ," I should have written "I doubt that I am the first, let alone the only, reader to notice the error . . . "

That "it's" in the first sentence of your discussion can really turn off a reader.

It should, of course, be "its," the possessive fom of the pronoun "it."

I doubt that I am the only, let alone the first, reader to notice the error, as you have many sharp readers among your learned audience (I say this sincerely: these days irony and parody come so easily that I find I must declare, as though under oath, when I'm being serious).

Thank you, Roger, for defending the West even as it disintegrates and commits suicide.

I don't want the last word on this scandal to be that 5 years down the road that the culprit was found - coped a plea - and sent to jail - and when everyone heard the name they collectively went "Who?"

If that happens justice will have been officially buried on that day.

To the credit of our republican led house they have voted to diminish the budget of the IRS for tax enforcement. A small step to be sure but with such dimwits its a long learning curve.

In Watergate, Nixon resigned for being connected to a break-in to Democrat headquarters. But he didn't actually use the apparatus of the state to go after Democrats, only small-time hired hoodlums. Nixon did not directly order the break-in.

The IRS scandal is like this but where the state itself was used to target conservative citizens, not just the Republican party. This is much worse than Watergate.

The IRS issue isn't less serious than Watergate, it's much worse, much scarier, and marks a turning point for America.

Correct, but there are 3 other big differences that will make things much tougher:1. Nixon kept the tapes, where it looks like Obamas minions have done a much better job of dewtroying all the evidence.2. The MSM hated Nixon, and was eager to investigate him at any opportunity, while the MSM loves Obama, and will actively cover for him.3. During Nixon there were some honest repubs on the commitee that actually wanted to find the truth. But now any dems on the committee may as well be Obama press agents.

"Congress should be devouring the bandwidth of the targeted agencies. Flooding the zone with requests, constant depositions of senior leaders, a constant legal barrage of inquiry for every email, every piece of paper, everything, all the time. Who cares if we use it? Torture them every minute of the day and force them to live in fear of contempt charges. Make their execs lawyer up, and dig dig dig at every inconsistency.

Second, the power of the purse is entirely underutilized, and Congress as a rule has no creativity. Don’t cooperate? Zero out every executive bonus in the agency for a decade. Don’t cooperate? No more conferences, training seminars, trips. Don’t cooperate? No more drivers for senior execs. Don’t cooperate? Every construction project for every building your agency wants is zeroed. Don’t cooperate? We’re relocating 98% of your manpower to Omaha. Don’t cooperate? Zero out the public affairs budget. Don’t cooperate? Every program with ‘green’ ‘affirmative’ ‘equal opportunity’ ‘LGBT’ ‘diversity’ or ‘awareness’ is zeroed out.

Sure, it sounds petty, but the agency people we’re talking about are the most parochial, small-minded bureaucratic weasels, and their perks and powers are all they care about. All it takes is a more bloody-minded approach."

Time to file a suit against the NSA to produce the "lost" documents. As Mr. Adams says in another article; "Time to go on the offensive". Big time; I would add. Sue every last one of them! Holder, Lerner, Koskinen, et al should be in jail for their crimes and maleficence. "Shock and Awe" should be the battle plan; and don't let up. Uncover the evidence through discovery and make them defend their actions in a public forum. I used to wonder how any nation could be taken over by tyrants; that is not the case any longer. It is happening before our very eyes.

I fear that these two judges are being ordered and directed to act 'fair and unpartial' simply to advance Dear Leader's "not a smidgen" obfuscation/misdirection/lie. With so many people involved in this criminal act of intimidation, I find it hard to believe there is not one single true Patriot somewhere within the confines of the FBI or CIA or NSA with access to some damning documents.....will they have the courage to come forward and be deposed in open court, or at least simply "leak" the documents to an intrepid reporter like Ms. Atkisson? Please pray for our country before violence erupts; it's a powder keg right now.

Where is the Democratic Party's Howard Baker, who asked "what did the President know, and when did he know it" which spelled the beginning of the end of the Nixon presidency.

IS there a Howard Baker in the current Democratic Party, or are the so much the party appratchik's that they don't give a sheet about the good of the country, or the Constitution, that they would continue to support a man/presidency that has gone far, far beyond what Nixon only HOPED to do...where is that man/woman? Where oh where, indeed...